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Now that BB is starting to have some stock:
Has anyone returned their 360 and gotten another one with better battery life? Reading all these batt life reports, the devices seem to either struggle to get 12hrs or easily make it double that. That sounds like an inconsistency in hardware to me.
I'm in the "barely 12 hr" camp, despite resetting, calibrating, screen off, brightness at 1, correct firmware etc.
I exchanged mine for cash. Will try again next year.
what phone are you pairing with the 360? I wonder if not having a bluetooth LE capable phone affect the battery usage. That's the one thing I haven't heard many people mention.
I think a lot depends what you do each day. Yesterday I had great battery life. But went to a couple of meetings and received some texts and emails.
Today I've been installing done light switches and using a screwdriver which is killing my battery life due to the wrist morons always triggering the watch face to turn on
I am performing this experiment now. Just exchanged the one I got last Monday for one that just arrived at my local BB today. Will post my results.
I'm using a Moto X, btw, and I got 12 hrs of batt with the barest of use. I was sitting at my desk at work all day barely using it at all. I def understand variance in results depending on use, but this was bad battery life with almost no usage.
Not the end of the day, but: the new 360 has been off the charger for 4hrs now and it's down 15%. That's a massive improvement.
I should note that the only thing I did differently over my standard use for the previous one was to switch the heart rate app to "Fit" in the Wear app.
quietglow said:
I should note that the only thing I did differently over my standard use for the previous one was to switch the heart rate app to "Fit" in the Wear app.
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Does that prevent the periodic heart-rate cards from appearing? I turned off the annoying step card, but I haven't yet found a good way to completely prevent the heart-rate cards. Whoever at Motorola thought fitness apps should be included as mandatory should be... well... maybe strapped to a running treadmill for a week or so. I'll bet then they'd see the logic in making them optional as they should be.
I am actually not sure, but I saw it suggested in several "make the battery not suck" threads.
I am pro fitness apps (one of the reasons I bought it was that I wanted a step counter and it was't that much more than a fitbit) but man they missed the boat on the UI of the fitness apps. All the apps with the same purpose, no real ability to control what's being logged and how often, no way to export data, no way to have just steps counted etc. It's a big enough of a mess than it should have been shipped with the fitness stuff turned off, particularly if that ends up being the source of the battery problems.
I finally put my replacement 360 in the cradle at 10pm last night, 16 hrs after I took it out. It had 22% battery left, and that was obviously the first charge cycle, so it'll get better. The longest my first one lasted was just over 12 hours, and that was after at least 5 charge cycles. I'm pretty sure there was something different and/or wrong with the first one.
Hi all
Really fancy buying the moto 360 but most of the reviews slate the old processor that is inside the watch, and they say because of this it's not really future proof.
Can anyone else see this watch struggle to use the new apps that come out for Android wear in say a years time?
The watches interface feels fine and snappy. Most apps I believe will really run on your smartphone and output its results to your watch. So the watch is really acting like a terminal to your phone and this is the way it should be. I know for a fact Google now voice recognition works this way on the watch.. Newer versions of Android Wear will be rolling out optimizing battery and performance, this has already made great impact on the Moto 360 since it came out.
How much processor does it need? Seems like just a bluetooth interface with a phone to me.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say if you like the design of the watch, buy it.
I think it will be more than a year before a better round smartwatch comes along.
Why? Motorola designed their ass off with this one: http://youtube.com/Nz7MjoCykNU
The processor is a trade-off, by going with the older one they simplify design and lower the price point. But it's like a computer, if your processor is fast enough so that memory is your bottleneck there is no reason to upgrade.
The only so-so thing about it was battery life, and the update basically solved that... With future updates it's only going to get better, and it's already great!
Omap ti is the same processor that was used for galaxy nexus.. Its a dual core processor and does a decent job on the 360.. Its not laggy by any means, especially after the recent update
It's more than enough processor for the current state of Android Wear. It may not support the bells and whistles of 2nd and 3rd gen watches, but should remain as usable in 1-2 years as it is today.
My hunch is that for most folks the physical abuse the watch takes will reduce it's life span more than anything. At the current price point (and what I would assume would be cheaper watches down the road) I don't see it being practical to repair/replace anything (except the band) on anything except a very new device.
EnIXmA said:
Omap ti is the same processor that was used for galaxy nexus.. Its a dual core processor and does a decent job on the 360.. Its not laggy by any means, especially after the recent update
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Cores are somewhat irrelevant. Even the "better" processor used in other watches are limited to running one core only.
Sent from my XT1080 using XDA Free mobile app
I was concerned about this too. I ordered my 360 the day they released and over the following days read reviews mentioning the weak CPU used in it. I was pretty annoyed, especially since I already owned the cheaper G Watch, which had a much better CPU in it. Over the first couple weeks of owning it, i went back and forth between "Man, the G Watch animations were noticeably smoother, better battery life... " and "How much does the CPU/animation smoothness really matter in the end?".
After the most recent update, the battery life and animation smoothness have both improved, and I rarely find myself resentfully thinking about the older CPU in my watch. It just works, and well.
In short: I wouldnt let the comparatively weak specs put you off - it is more than enough to power the current functionality of Android Wear (and I cant imagine what else they would add that you would need "future proofing" for in the smart watch, aside from the independent GPS and music playback features theyre supposedly going to be adding, which TBH i wouldnt even use or want, unnecessary battery drain). If you want a smart watch, this is the one to get.
Wait for the lg watch R. ..its coming out next week
Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 2
pakure said:
Wait for the lg watch R. ..its coming out next week
Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 2
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not in the US...
The Verge said:
LG's round-faced G Watch R smartwatch was only announced back in August, but it's coming out next week — if you live in South Korea. LG yesterday confirmed the new Android Wear device will be launching in its home country on October 14th, for a price of 352,000 won, which at current exchange rates, clocks in at a tax-inclusive price of around $328. There's still no release date or price for the device in the US or Europe, but LG's cheaper G Watch was originally priced at 277,000 won in Korean and $230 in the US, meaning the G Watch R is likely to cost around $290 before taxes are added for US sales.
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http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/8/6944273/lgs-g-watch-r-is-the-most-expensive-android-wear-watch-yet
pakure said:
Wait for the lg watch R. ..its coming out next week
Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 2
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That's what I thought at first but, man, that HUGE bezel.
Do you like what it does? How it looks? That should drive your decision. If you're not sure, you can wait until something better comes out. Of course there will always be something better over the horizon, but the 360 can be had today. Is that worth anything to you?
How it looks was enough to cause me to skip over the earlier watches and wait for the 360. I have not been disappointed. It is a little irritating that Moto chose not to go with the latest and greatest processor. But screen probably dominates battery life and whereas the processor would be dated for a modern phone but seems like it performs adequately in a watch.
no buyer's remorse here!
To be honest, I now appreciate what Motorola did with the 360, processor-wise.
The Snapdragon 400 chip used in other wearable devices is heavily crippled (3 out of 4 cores disabled) and also I believe that the graphics engine is heavily underclocked in order to preserve battery. And there is no way for the cores to be "unlocked" in future updates since the battery has limited capacity. So the S400 is only a name, but it has nothing to do with the S400 from the smartphones.
The problem today, that all the manufacturers have, is that there is no processor truly designed for wearable devices, which means low computing power, low graphics power, small footprint (to allow for larger battery) but with very low power requirements. I suppose these will come in 1-2 years, hopefully sooner.
What Motorola did was to choose the right processor for the right job (the latest battery-improving update shows this too), and especially for the right price. Many people think that the $250USD / 250EUR / 200GBP is more than fair price, and the continuous lack of stock also shows that this is true.
Why use a quarter of a Snapdragon 400 and unnecessarily increase the overall price (example: the LG G Watch R will be priced at 300EUR) ? Remember, there are (much) fewer than 330x290 pixels to drive, and a very simplified OS to run.
I think this whole processor discussion is much to do about nothing. I don't believe that hardly anyone, if they hadn't been able to see the processor on a spec sheet, would even complain about the processor because I don't see that it has any impact on the use of the device.
People forget that OMAP 3630 in moto 360 clocked at 1ghz runs Android 4.4 in Motorola Defy with 480x854 pixel without a hiccup today.
kevinlevrone said:
What Motorola did was to choose the right processor for the right job (the latest battery-improving update shows this too), and especially for the right price.
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Not everybody is reporting improvements, or at least not to the level of this thing actually being usable.
So far, I have been unable to get below 4% an hour consumption with light to light-moderate usage and almost no app usage on the latest update, and if the thing is used much at all, consumption is more like 8% an hour. In two of the last four days, I have been unable to get through a single day of light to light-moderate usage without running out of battery altogether, to where the watch powered off completely.
Part of the reason for that is down to Motorola's choice of processor. There is a lot more to it than just performance; the processor Motorola chose is using 8-9 year old process technology, and one core on this processor is using far more power than one core on a more modern processor. In the process, it is wasting battery life simply generating heat.
If the unneeded cores in other smartwatches are completely disabled so as not to waste power, then chances are they will use less power. And if the individual cores are faster, those cores will be active for less time to complete any given task, which will allow them to return to sleep sooner.
There's a lot more to this than simply which is newest or which is cheapest. It's far more subtle than that, and I'm not convinced Motorola has made a smart decision.
Really. What do you plan on doing with your Moto360? HD video editing or large format image processing? C'mon, man.
Much like current phones, the processing power FAR outpaces any software you're going to run on this device. CPU power on a smart watch is a total non-issue.
And for the record, since the last update I take my watch off of the dock at 0730 daily. When it hits the dock again at 2300 I never see less than 30% remaining.
Dusty Rhodes said:
Really. What do you plan on doing with your Moto360? HD video editing or large format image processing? C'mon, man.
Much like current phones, the processing power FAR outpaces any software you're going to run on this device. CPU power on a smart watch is a total non-issue.
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As I just said, it has nothing to do with CPU power. A CPU made on a smaller process will waste less power as heat. A CPU that is faster will be in operation for less time, so may actually use less power on a given process size.
And for the record, since the last update I take my watch off of the dock at 0730 daily. When it hits the dock again at 2300 I never see less than 30% remaining.
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You're lucky. I'd love for that to be the case. Right now, I'm tending to think that there are either batches of watches out there with fundamental problems, or some people just use their smartwatches exceptionally little.
I am a huge Motorola fan but no matter what anyone says the processor in the 360 does limit it. It is fast enough to do the job but when it is really working it eats up the battery at an insane rate, and you can really feel the heat it generates. I think the Moto 360 is great for basic notifications and as a fun watch you can change faces on daily but it will never excel at running apps as it is just too power hungry. I suspect Android Wear itself also isn't as optimized as it could be.
I have no problems with battery life using it for notifications through out the day. I generally have 30 to 40% left at the end of the day(8:30am to 1 am) while using Facer for my watch faces. If I was to start swapping faces for a bit though the battery will take a major hit. And in an ideal world I would have preferred to have the display always on.
I'm currently in the midst of an experiment with my watch. I have:
* The latest firmware
* Used it for a full week already, so battery life should be fine as the battery has been through a bunch of charge cycles
* No apps of any kind that interact with Wear installed
* Watch completely reset after apps were uninstalled
* Watch charged overnight after being reset (showed 99% when taken off the charger)
* No custom watch face (I'm on the default)
* Developer mode not enabled
* Notifications from Tapatalk muted as I get a lot of those
* Only received two notifications today, and set one alarm
* Checked the time twice
* Checked battery level twice
* Been sitting still working at my desk all morning
* Only had the watch further than three feet from my phone (which supports Bluetooth Low Energy) one time, for perhaps 60 seconds
* Screen set to the dimmest level (level 1)
* All other settings at default except Ambient mode enabled
After 3.25 hours, my battery has already fallen by 24%. That's 7.4% an hour, or enough for a 13 hour, 32.5 minute battery life when almost completely unused.
There is literally nothing I can do to improve battery life at this point other than to disable ambient mode, take the watch off my wrist, put it on my desk, and not use it at all.
I am floored by how spectacularly bad the battery life can be on this thing, and how much it varies. When idle, my watch apparently uses four times more power than other people are reporting with active usage and all sorts of apps installed.
Xiaomi Mi Band
USD $24.99
Overall 9/10 :
The Xiaomi Mi Band is a fitness band that is comparable to the Fitbit Flex. The band is made by the popular Chinese company Xiaomi renowned for making affordable good quality tech and the Mi Band is no exception, It is comfortable to wear and I often forget that I am wearing it. The band is available from various sources across the internet but I chose Dx.com as they frequently have them on sale ($14 at the time of writing this) and they ship internationally free. The band is of exceptional quality the only area where it is lacking is the tracker sometimes pops out of Band when doing something that required me to more my wrists a lot (Sailing). The Band officially supports IOS and Android with the Mi fit app but there is a more locked down 3rd party app available for the windows phone.
The Band is full of features for such a low price point, as well as being your standard pedometer it track your sleep, Vibrate for alarms and can vibrate and light up when you are getting a call. A massive strong point for the band as the battery life, They say that it can go 30 days on a charge but I charged it up for an hour and a half when I brought it (32 days ago) and it’s still going with 40% remaining. Another good point of the band is that it automatically detects when you are sleeping and starts counting unlike the fitbit where the sleep tracking has to be imported manually. A useless of the band is the leds on the top, They are white only as opposed to the rgb on the previous model and don't turn on unless there is a notification and it vibrates, it would become a lot more useful if you could press the top down and get a rough idea of how many steps you have taken towards your goal as opposed to just lighting up whenever it feels like it.
Pros:
Great Battery life
Silent Alarms (Through Vibration)
Accurate sleep and step tracking (Tested with a Microsoft smart band 2, with the two bands off each other by a difference of 12 steps)
You Can get Notifications from most apps
Came with a replacement band
Cons:
Can only get notifications from 5 apps at a time and you have to have your Bluetooth on for this to happen draining phone's battery life
Device sometimes pops out of the band
Only white LEDS
My sister knows me all too well and gave me a Gear Fit 2 for Christmas.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased and the battery life of the watch itself is better than I expected. Unfortunately, it seems that having the watch permanently paired to the phone has had way more impact on battery life than I would have thought.
I'm not sure if the gear fit 2 is a BLE (bluetooth low energy) device but I would sincerely hope so but either way, having it paired has absolutley smashed my average battery expectations to the point that I am considering not wearing the band unless I'm exercising.
When I bought the active, I had to stop using my miband 1s for the same reason: it would just eat phone battery, but I never had that problem with any of my other phones.
I'm not sure what I'm looking for here save to say: great product, terrible result if you don't want to charge your phone daily.
I can't comment on those 2 specific devices but I have a Gear S2 3G model and I see no extra battery drain at all. If anything I probably get better battery life on my S7 active since I got the watch. Not having to turn on my phone for every notification definitely helps battery life in a positive way, even if it isn't substantial.
I'm still using the factory firmware so when I return from holidays I will flash to a slightly newer one and report back if it gives me a better result.
I'm trying to decide between these two and and battery life (SOT) will be the deciding factor for me. I've never owned an iPhone or a Pixel before so I'm not sure what to expect with the Pro's battery life while the Max has been getting universal accolades for its SOT. I've always been an android guy (galaxy notes mostly) and don't like apple (variety of reasons) but the new 13 pro max has set the standard when it comes to hardware with the best camera & video capabilities and now battery life so I'm reluctantly considering it.
I understand in some ways it's not fair to compare these two flagships considering their price difference so I don't expect the 6 pro to match the Max toe to toe with and that's ok. Since they both utilize an LTPO display though I guess it all comes down to software utilization when it comes to their SOT. On paper and looking at the battery specs- the 6 pro should wipe the floor with the Pro Max but since I've never owned a google phone I'm not sure how that'll translate in real life.
Past Pixel and future 6 Pro owners- what are your expectations when it comes to battery life/ SOT once you get your 6 Pros? Do you expect to come close to a full 2 days battery life before having to charge it? If anyone has owned/ will own both please feel free to share your your SOT experience and which one you feel is better.
In short will the Pixel 6 Pro match or even exceed the 13 Pro Max's battery life?
Thanks!
Android over IOS for me any day,daughter has iPhone 13 pro ,be carefully some features only available if you buy the larger storage options
Wait till the reviews on monday
combat goofwing said:
Android over IOS for me any day,daughter has iPhone 13 pro ,be carefully some features only available if you buy the larger storage options
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you mean for the iphone 13 pro has limited features due to large storage?
dj24 said:
I'm trying to decide between these two and and battery life (SOT) will be the deciding factor for me. I've never owned an iPhone or a Pixel before so I'm not sure what to expect with the Pro's battery life while the Max has been getting universal accolades for its SOT. I've always been an android guy (galaxy notes mostly) and don't like apple (variety of reasons) but the new 13 pro max has set the standard when it comes to hardware with the best camera & video capabilities and now battery life so I'm reluctantly considering it.
I understand in some ways it's not fair to compare these two flagships considering their price difference so I don't expect the 6 pro to match the Max toe to toe with and that's ok. Since they both utilize an LTPO display though I guess it all comes down to software utilization when it comes to their SOT. On paper and looking at the battery specs- the 6 pro should wipe the floor with the Pro Max but since I've never owned a google phone I'm not sure how that'll translate in real life.
Past Pixel and future 6 Pro owners- what are your expectations when it comes to battery life/ SOT once you get your 6 Pros? Do you expect to come close to a full 2 days battery life before having to charge it? If anyone has owned/ will own both please feel free to share your your SOT experience and which one you feel is better.
In short will the Pixel 6 Pro match or even exceed the 13 Pro Max's battery life?
Thanks!
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Gapps, by far, are the worst offender when it comes to battery life. With a little bit of effort and root, you can tame them to a significant degree. With some determination, you can replace them entirely with something that is more supportive of your freedom (I've *completely* replaced all goog with a self-hosted instance of Nextcloud and I don't install gapps -- not even microG).
But here is the thing about battery life. Its not even reasonable to measure it in ways its usually presented, because what it really comes down to is (a) usage, and (b) network connection. Screen on, but doing nothing, will use a lot less battery than screen on, and running video gamez.
As far as camera and video capabilities go... apple people will praise apple. Look for INDEPENDENT and CRITICAL reviews to get something more honest. I really doubt that they have anything on the P6's. Google's been ahead in photography for years now, and its really burning the fruit company since in the before-time, its the ONLY thing they actually had. Now they don't even have that.
lucky_strike33 said:
you mean for the iphone 13 pro has limited features due to large storage?
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Yes if you get the standard storage the cinematic mode doesn't record in 4k ,there's a couple of other little things like that
combat goofwing said:
Yes if you get the standard storage the cinematic mode doesn't record in 4k ,there's a couple of other little things like that
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Without really giving a crap, I'm going to guess that they are going to claim that its because the flash chips are in RAID-0 so won't be fast enough without the bigger (more chips) option.
96carboard said:
Gapps, by far, are the worst offender when it comes to battery life. With a little bit of effort and root, you can tame them to a significant degree. With some determination, you can replace them entirely with something that is more supportive of your freedom (I've *completely* replaced all goog with a self-hosted instance of Nextcloud and I don't install gapps -- not even microG).
But here is the thing about battery life. Its not even reasonable to measure it in ways its usually presented, because what it really comes down to is (a) usage, and (b) network connection. Screen on, but doing nothing, will use a lot less battery than screen on, and running video gamez.
As far as camera and video capabilities go... apple people will praise apple. Look for INDEPENDENT and CRITICAL reviews to get something more honest. I really doubt that they have anything on the P6's. Google's been ahead in photography for years now, and its really burning the fruit company since in the before-time, its the ONLY thing they actually had. Now they don't even have that.
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I agree with most of what you said. Pixels have undoubtedly been the camera champs maybe equaled by more recent Huawei flagships. However there's no question that iPhones have had the best video quality of any one out there for a while now. This is all here and there and I don't really care that much anymore because the gap isn't that big unless you're an enthusiast or someone zooming or pixel peeping (which I'm not... for the most part }
I also agree with you about apps in general but you can nowadays put them in deep sleep so they barely use any in the background for the most part. I don't use a lot of apps but it's interesting since you bring up a good point as to whether ios does a better job than android when it comes to battery optimization. I'll have to do more research on that.
I think different companies like Motorolla, Realme and others have great battery optimization while the mainstream ones less so. Now Apple seems to have made a leap in this regard too. Gsmarena has a great tool to measure overall battery life and just look at this list where android phones (mostly not found stateside) dominate.
Previous Iphones weren't any good when it came to battery life. Apples forum is flooded with people complaining about battery life which is why they spent a lot of time talking about the improved battery life on the iPhone 13. My last iPhone was the iPhone X and it would only last me 6 hours of medium usage.
hello00 said:
Previous Iphones weren't any good when it came to battery life. Apples forum is flooded with people complaining about battery life which is why they spent a lot of time talking about the improved battery life on the iPhone 13. My last iPhone was the iPhone X and it would only last me 6 hours of medium usage.
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That's why they call it Iphonie!
Why bother so much about the battery if both phones have a fast charger!!
DinarQ8 said:
Why bother so much about the battery if both phones have a fast charger!!
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Because youre not always near a plug socket
hello00 said:
Previous Iphones weren't any good when it came to battery life. Apples forum is flooded with people complaining about battery life which is why they spent a lot of time talking about the improved battery life on the iPhone 13. My last iPhone was the iPhone X and it would only last me 6 hours of medium usage.
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You're right but talking strictly flagship they've been incrementally improving since the 11 Pro Max. The 13 Pro Max has taken a drastic step forward even more so where I feel mainstream android in general (like Samsung) have to respond or they're going to lose potentially more people like me.
Anyways I see so far no one is predicting how the 6 pro's battery life will compare to the 13 max Pro.
I'll take a leap and say I think the tensor chip coupled with the LTPO display with google's clean android overlay will match the iphone 13 max's battery life
DinarQ8 said:
Why bother so much about the battery if both phones have a fast charger!!
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In this COVID day and age where everyone is staying home mostly- not so much. But once you start going outside more you'll need it. Especially if you're an outdoors person like me.
I'm still nostalgic for the days where i use to carry 1 or 2 extra batteries in my wallet and pop off the back to switch them out which literally took 5 seconds. There was a time during a camping trip back in the day when out in the middle of nowhere, everyone's phone died after the first day. Everyone used mine for the next few days. I got lucky when a certain gorgeous gal walked in my tent in the middle of the night to use it and decided to stay after.... aah those were the days
Sorry... friday afternoon and I just popped open my 4th beer
The iPhone 12 lineup has problems with its quick battery drain as compared to other models. The 13 has improved quite a bit, but still not on pair with the s21u
hello00 said:
The iPhone 12 lineup has problems with its quick battery drain as compared to other models. The 13 has improved quite a bit, but still not on pair with the s21u
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Wait, you can't be serious? The S21 ultra can't hold a candle to the 13 Pro Max and it's not even close. It might compared to the lesser iPhone 13 models but that's not a fair comparison by any sense of the imagination.
I almost went Iphone 13 pro max this gen. Almost. You know why I didn't? No fingerprint sensor. I'm not about to go back to entering my pin every time I want to open my device and masks make face recognition worthless.
Well, the pixel has a lot to live up to. I think it'll beat the iphone in pics. But battery life? I'm getting 2 hours screen on time every 10 percent battery used. Ridiculously good. I hope the pixel can get near that. Doubt it though
lawtq said:
Well, the pixel has a lot to live up to. I think it'll beat the iphone in pics. But battery life? I'm getting 2 hours screen on time every 10 percent battery used. Ridiculously good. I hope the pixel can get near that. Doubt it though.
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Do you have the 13 pro max?
dj24 said:
I'm still nostalgic for the days where i use to carry 1 or 2 extra batteries in my wallet and pop off the back to switch them out which literally took 5 seconds.
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We all missd these days
For me, there will be no difference in battery life if there is an hour or hour and a half increase
I won't be outside for 24 hours and when I go out I don't use the phone for more than 6 hours